


On Such Small Things

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On such small things do fate and the future depend. If John Sheppard had been a little less cavalier about sitting in the chair that day in Antarctica, or Teyla Emmagan’s people had moved on to their winter campsite instead of staying for another moon to finish their autumn trading, they wouldn’t be sitting here in Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Such Small Things

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2009 Genficathon, category of 'friendship' and to the prompt "Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of Hell. (Emily Dickenson)".

It starts with football in the rec room.

He watches her eyes widen as the tumbled puffs of butter-and-salt goodness melt in her mouth. She watches as he rears up from his slouch to protest the decision of an umpire who can’t hear him and surely would not care.

She asks about the rules and wonders at the idea of a game that seems to be as much about fighting as it is about play. He asks about the things her people do for recreation and briefly imagines a Pegasus football league.

On such small things do fate and the future depend. If John Sheppard had been a little less cavalier about sitting in the chair that day in Antarctica, or Teyla Emmagan’s people had moved on to their winter campsite instead of staying for another moon to finish their autumn trading, they wouldn’t be sitting here in Atlantis.

\--

Two days after the siege ends, Teyla finds herself in a moment off the trail in the city of the Ancestors.

It is not a quiet moment. Around her, the bustle of the city’s personnel pass with their trays and their talk, and there is the clatter of dishes and dishware in the kitchens and the sound of people eating, arguing, laughing, conversing.

Teyla is not a part of any of it.

The conversations filling the room are of Earth - of a place she has never seen except in Major Sheppard’s mind. The people here, while friendly towards her, hold greater ties to those from their home planet, even as she feels her ties stronger to her people.

She should ask to be taken to the mainland but there are no pilots to spare. Neither Colonel Everett’s forces nor the Daedelus personnel are familiar with the ‘jumpers, and she does not think her request to be taken out to her people would be well received among these strangers.

For many of them are strangers still - people whose faces she knows, but with whom the ties of friendship and commonality are thin.

Those with whom she shares stronger bonds are not here: Major Sheppard, Dr. McKay, Elizabeth, Aiden.

She watched them step through to Earth - all except Aiden - and felt strangely bereft in their absence.

Perhaps it is the sense of change that is in the air - the weathering of too many storms at once. Perhaps it is the loneliness - out of all the people on the expedition, she spent the most time with her team-mates and Elizabeth in order to learn the ways of Earth and to impart the ways of Pegasus to them.

Perhaps it is only that she stood on the gateroom floor and felt the threads between them stretch thin - their ties to Earth and the home they left behind stronger at that moment than the ties the held them to Teyla and Atlantis.

Hunched over her meal, Teyla remembers the smile Elizabeth gave her: brief and pre-occupied, as though her mind had already passaged through to Earth. It was, in some way, a gesture of trust and respect - the city was in Teyla’s hands, and she need not worry about it.

Dr. McKay spun on his heel at the last minute, hurrying back and leaving a list of instructions for Dr. Zelenka before hesitating. “ _You’ll be okay with that, won’t you?_ ” It was, in his way, a thoughtful gesture. Teyla appreciated it even as she found his uncertainty amusing.

Major Sheppard seemed nervous although he flashed her a quick grin. “ _So, you’re going to be fine, hey? Lorne sounds like a nice guy - his reports are good, anyway. You should be okay._ ” While Elizabeth’s silence presumed Teyla’s competence, she suspected the inconsequentials of the Major’s conversation betrayed more of his own situation. “ _Take care, alright?_ ” And then he was gone.

They left the city to Teyla; but Teyla has been left to herself in the city.

\--

He’s still clumsier with the sticks than without but she insists they continue working with the weaponry.

At first he protested that she’s only keeping him on the sticks because they give her the advantage. Then she takes him in hand-to-hand, one on one, and lays him out three times in a row. His body’s barely bruised - his ego took most of the fall.

And, as they work out, they converse. Small snippets of life and living, experience and understanding. He can’t imagine a life spent on the run - he’s always had a safe place to come back to. She can’t imagine having a safe space - everywhere she has been the Wraith have eventually found.

On small things does fate depend. Had John not been so isolated from his relatives and his colleagues, or Teyla chosen to leave with her people, they would never have been friends.

\--

John finds Teyla sitting by the window in the gym, staring blankly out at the ocean.

“Teyla?”

He’s not sure if he expects Teyla to look back at him or...something else. The city is full of Wraith - where ‘full of’ is valid for a value of ‘three’ - and Teyla’s been zoning in and out a lot lately.

No surprise there since her genes make her susceptible to the Wraith. What surprises John is that he trusts her - that he’d trust her even if they knew the Wraith could directly control her awake. Caldwell can call it foolish, Elizabeth can think it’s unwise, but John knows Teyla - he would put his life and the lives of his people in her hands.

He has before.

Which is why this really sucks.

She turns, and he’s relieved to see Teyla looking back at him, her expression bright with a falseness that John can see when most people wouldn’t. “You are about to head out.”

“Yeah.” John hesitates. “Look, about the mission--”

“I understand why Colonel Caldwell is reluctant to allow me to go,” she says. “My abilities are a liability.”

John thinks it would be easier if she didn’t understand. Part of the puzzle of Teyla is that she keeps her temper under wraps so much of the time - she rarely loses it when life or the universe or Earth’s political strictures throw her a curve ball.

The only thing that he’s seen disturb her is a lack of belief in her abilities; one reason of the many why he doesn’t doubt her.

“We’re gonna miss you,” he says.

Her eyebrows rise. “You will be too busy. And Ronon will look after Rodney.”

That goes without saying. But Ronon and the Wraith don’t mix too well. Teyla’s got a cooler head for expedience - she’d have to, living in Atlantis. “Look, I just want you to know it wasn’t my decision.”

Caldwell had overridden him and, after a reluctant moment, Elizabeth had concurred. “ _It’s not just Teyla or your team, John, it’s the entire mission. A lot hinges on this._ ”

As though John didn’t know that - as though Teyla didn’t. But it has to sting to face the possibility of taking out the Wraith with the retrovirus - all of them, for all time - of making something out of the debacle with Michael - and being sidelined.

He knows why she isn’t making a fuss. It’s for the sake of the Athosians. For the sake of Pegasus - she’ll sit back and let others do what she’s not allowed.

But it’s gotta sting like a bitch.

“John,” she says, after a moment. “Be careful.”

That goes without saying. Which is why John stares at her a moment longer. “Why?”

Bare shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “Because they are Wraith.”

It’s the same warning she gave him before they started this dialogue with the hiveship - a dialogue which she’s kept out of. It’s partly her own initiative, but it’s partly because Atlantis doesn’t want to suddenly discover her Wraithgene’s a liability rather than an asset.

John feels a shiver down his spine as he walks off to the collection point for the _Daedelus_ crew.

Teyla protested the tests on Michael, too.

\--

The amble back along the trail is easy, conducted in conversational starts and comfortable stops.

Rodney and Ronon went hunting for the power source that originally brought them to this planet, but she felt they should return to the village and he concurred. She does not mention to him a question Kanaan brought up in council about the progress of the fight against the Wraith. He doesn’t talk about the IOA’s latest requirements of Atlantis.

They’re halfway back to the village when he brings up his weapon and signals for silence. Her gun is up a second after his, her senses alert and listening, feeling, looking for something that is out of place. He cocks his head at her, asking a silent question, trusting that she will catch what he might miss.

On small things do fates depend. If Teyla hadn’t felt the tearing scream of the Wraith dart long before it reached their ears, or if John had been less willing to trust her, they would never have saved their team-mates or the village.

\--

Once again, Teyla finds herself standing off the trail in the middle of meal.

This time, however, it is not among strangers in Atlantis but among her own people on New Athos.

Again, there is the chatter and the conversation, the laughter and jokes being shared from the day’s work. To her right, Jinto and his friends are pestering Ronon for another story of his travels; to her left, Halling and Kanaan arguing their trade needs.

After a lifetime among her people and a spare two years in the City of the Ancestors, the ties that bind Teyla to New Athos seem strangely fragile, like the webs that faintly span the trailpaths through this new planet. Perhaps in time they will once again thicken and tie her more closely to her people but, in the present moment, she stands to the side of the trail and watches the others go by.

“...must see that we cannot afford this trade.”

“What I see is that we must be more self-sufficient in the coming months,” Halling is saying. “It will be a hard harvest and a harder winter.”

“We have been through difficult times before,” says Kanaan from beside her. His thigh lies warm against hers. “We can do it again.”

Teyla catches the look Halling sends her way; understands what Halling is not saying. They have grown accustomed to an easier life under the aegis of the Lanteans, their independences worn away in bits and parts. There is no fault to be accrued, simply the acknowledgement that they must re-learn the hard life again.

And it will not be easy.

Teyla feels the nagging tug of adventure when she steps through the Ring to another planet. She always has. The difference is that now she knows what she can do, what she can be, what may be done when all else seems lost. Living in Atlantis - knowing the Lanteans - has given her options where she had none before.

“Teyla?”

She meets Ronon’s questioning gaze, sees the eyes of the others in the room upon her. “Drifting,” she says by way of excuse, and smiles. “It has been a long day.”

Halling accepts her explanation without question; Kanaan does not, but does not push the point. Which leaves Ronon to confront her later that night.

“You miss them.”

It goes without saying.

Teyla can still hear the hesitating, almost stuttering platitudes that came from Rodney’s mouth when he came to leave her with a Lantean ‘beacon signal’ - just in case. She can still see the tense lines that sprang up around Elizabeth’s eyes and mouth - the lines that her friend hated, seeing them as age rather than wisdom and experience. She can still feel John’s forehead against hers - a rare gesture, and all the more significant for the rarity.

A separation - more, a severance - and one that will not feature a reunion in the near future.

It should not hurt like this.

Teyla always expected to live between worlds in Atlantis; she did not expect it here, in a place that should be home.

\--

They each have their legends.

She thinks of the legend of Biralia, who was an Ancestor who once defended the Athosians in the face of the Wraith; it seems appropriate. He thinks of the goddess Kali, who has multiple arms and is a mother-protector to mankind; it seems right.

His head still rings from the concussive force of the blow that threw him back. Her gaze never leaves the creature she’s fighting over his not-yet-dead body.

On such small things does the future depend. If Teyla had been a moment slower or John a little more concussed, he’d have been lunch instead of having sucker-welts all the way across his belly, and the hope of Pegasus would have died with him.

\--

Teyla feels ungainly in the last stages of her pregnancy.

The Lantean women joke about ‘beached whales’ and the one or two parents in the city have reassured her that her size and discomfort is normal.

The loneliness is not. She had the ultrasound a few days ago - the morning that John left to attend his father’s funeral. Teyla wished she could have spoken to him before then, offered her sorrow and words of comfort, but there was no time and no opportunity then.

It is why Teyla is looking for him now.

She finds him sitting in ‘his office’ - one of the rooms from which the military personnel are organised and dispatched. Paper is arranged around him in sliding piles and Teyla considers it a sign of his disquiet that he has willingly come down here to work instead of taking his reports and forms elsewhere.

“John.”

“Teyla.” He glances up as she eases herself into the chair opposite him. “How’s the kid?”

“He is doing fine. Dr. Keller should have sent you the ultrasound photographs.”

“Yeah, I haven’t had time to look at them yet.” He waves a hand at the papers but doesn’t ask what she’s doing here. Small cues, perhaps, but Teyla is accustomed to that which John does not voice.

“Is your brother well?”

He shrugs. “He was surprised to see me at the funeral.”

“You have not spoken with your family in some time.”

“No.” His fingers straighten a page, uncharacteristically meticulous as he lines it up with the edge of the desk. “We weren’t close.”

“That is not the same as not caring.”

“It’s not the same as missing them.”

 _Not the way you miss your people._ She can hear what he doesn’t say behind the words he does. “And caring for someone is not the same as missing them, John.”

He makes a noise like a snort. “That was very direct. Look, my relationship with my father wasn’t anything like yours--”

“He was still your father,” she says. John never speaks of his father except to say how disappointed Patrick Sheppard was with him. And that says many things of the unfinished relationship between the two men. “And I did not come down to talk with you about that.”

“You didn’t?”

“Strange as it may seem, I did not.” Teyla allows herself a smile. “I came to see if you will watch _Transformers_ with me. Rodney said you had not yet seen it.”

“I haven’t.” Still, he hesitates.

“Can the paperwork not wait?” Teyla knows it is not about the paperwork but about John’s feelings of guilt and anger. It is why she would rather be Wraith-taken than leave him here to fret his fringes.

From the look in his eyes, he knows it, too.

“Yeah,” he says at last. “It can.”

And he helps her to her feet, one hand resting on her shoulder to ensure she has her balance, before they go out to watch the movie.

\--

The city is silent.

Not the silence of sleep but the silence of abandonment. There’s no-one here but him and hasn’t been for thousands of years. It makes him grateful for Rodney’s voice, rasping and grumpy in his ears.

He moves through the corridors, determined and purposeful. Half his mind catalogues Rodney-hologram’s words; the other half screams at him that all this is wrong, that this isn’t how it ends - with the sun ablaze over a fiery desert, and the city of the Ancients abandoned to time. It won’t end with Earth abandoning Pegasus to Michael and the Wraith.

On small things does the future depend. If John doesn’t get back in time to save Teyla, then there’s no future for Pegasus.

\--

John juggles the remotes in one hand as he tries to pick up the cars with the other. The one balancing in the crook of his arm falls to the floor with a clatter, and he grimaces as he bends down again, barely holding onto the second car.

“Let me.” Teyla crouches down and scoops up the remote, holding it out of Torran’s reach although the boy squirms and kicks, eagerly reaching for the toy.

“Not until you’re older, little buddy,” John tells his namesake with a smile. “Thanks,” he adds as Teyla tucks it in the crook of his arm and they head off down towards the living quarters.

The city is silent and peaceful, with no disturbances and no interruptions.

Rodney's gone to deal with a crisis in the labs. Ronon's in the infirmary, healing up. Woolsey's in his office, probably realising that Ronon just doesn't do mission reports. And Kanaan of Athos is...well, on Athos.

Michael is dead.

They dredged the body that morning - a rescue operation that nobody argued. Carson went over the corpse with a fine-tooth electron microscope and every DNA test known to Atlantis and declared it was the original.

And so Atlantis is sleeping easy tonight.

Just not the two who were at the core of Michael's plot to take down the city - Teyla and her son.

The silence grows oppressive, thinking about what Michael did, what Michael wanted - Torran and Teyla, yes, but more than that - revenge, satisfaction, dominance.

 _It’s not the fall that kills you: it’s the short, sharp stop at the end._

John glances at her. "You okay?"

Teyla's glance shows surprise at first, before understanding seeps through. "He is dead," she says as she shifts the still squirming Torran in her arms. "It is over and he will not bother us again."

There's a grimness to the words that John feels along with her. Michael's cost them too much, time and again. Whatever Atlantis did to Michael has been paid for in blood and pain, a dozen times over.

He just wishes he could have been the one to deal with the hybrid.

That's what he does, isn't it? That's his job as expedition military leader: to deal with the threats to Atlantis and manage them. Only this time he nearly lost his life. Only Teyla's intervention saved him. She was the one to kill Michael in the end. No defanging or declawing, no lenience, no plea-bargain - just the steely determination on her face to end this threat once and for all.

Atlantis will never worry about Michael again.

John chooses to worry about Teyla.

She's been intense today - a little tired, but with a burning glow in the centre of her. If it was anyone else he’d say she was in love, but it's Teyla. What she gives of herself isn't to any man - unless it's her son - but to the hopes and dreams of her people and their future.

Killing Michael - brutal and terrifying as it was - was for her future, Torran’s future, and Atlantis. John knows that.

He wishes he could _feel_ it.

"You did good," he says at last, shifting remote controllers in his arms so they won't fall down.

But her smile holds sadness, even as she answers him, "I know."

\--

It ends somewhere in the unseen future.

Today, however, they turn from the railing and San Francisco's busy harbour to head back into the city they've used to save Earth from the Wraith.

She thinks of Torran and popcorn and going home. She hopes that someday she might live on a planet where the Wraith are little more than a distant memory. He thinks of road trips and paperwork and the small, tight smile she shot him as they looked at the results of their work from the balcony of Atlantis and saw that it was good. He hopes that someday he’ll get to see that smile on her face in Pegasus, too.

Maybe he could have saved the Pegasus galaxy without finding her. Maybe she could have fought the Wraith without ever meeting him. But these things are unknown, unwritten, unfathomable.

On such small things do fate and the future depend; but for the fall of fortune, he might have languished in Antartica while she died in the Athos raid and they would never have had this friendship spanning galaxies beyond understanding.

What they have is now and they have it here.

 


End file.
